Wandering Wednesday

My life belongs to me, but I’d like to disown it.

 

You can’t make this stuff up…obviously, we had our mail held while we were away. The held mail was delivered yesterday. Among the mail were two notices from the Arizona Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) indicating that the registration for our two Corvettes would be suspended on May 16 because we had let our insurance lapse. Of course, we did no such thing.

What I think happened is that when we sold the Cadillac ATS on April 6 and called our soon to be former insurance company to have the car removed from our policy, some incompetent sent a notice to Arizona that we had completely cancelled our policy. (Of course, that didn’t stop the company from billing us with a due date of May 6.)

By the way, the date of the notices was May 1. Our mail was delivered to us through May 10. Why didn’t we receive the notices before we left and why does MVD only give 15 days after the notice to “fix” the situation?

The world is fraying way past the edges.

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Those who scream “Abortion Is Murder” and only “God” can take a life are the same people who agitate for the universal right to own a device that is used to kill more than 40,000 Americans every year. Sorry, but the gun “advocates” are wrong and are hypocrites like all of those who blindly follow any so-called ideology.

Guns are a force multiplier. The cretin who murdered 19 students and 2 teachers yesterday would NOT have been able to perpetrate such evil using rocks or a knife. I vehemently disagree with most of the “policy” advocated by the Left, but they are right about guns.

This CNBC article lays out the sad and disgusting data from 2020. More than 19,000 people were killed in a homicide by gun in the US that year. The point of the article is that figure represented a 35% increase from 2019. Since when is “only” 14,000 gun homicide deaths acceptable? Oh, the rest of gun deaths are by suicide, which has been more prevalent than homicide in the US since at least 1900.

Think about this: of all of the children in the world age 0-14 who are killed by a gun, 87% of them are US children.

The world is fraying way past the edges. Blind adherence to any ideology is a road to disaster.

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Some links to posts from Why Evolution Is True:

 

Are college students “excellent sheep?”

Julian Baggini on free will

In a California case, ACLU and co-litigants claim that there are no biological differences between men and women

 

That last story is disturbing and is an example of the foolish and dangerous agenda of the Lunatic Left. In case you hadn’t figured this out, I loathe and despise both major political parties in this country and do not subscribe to the Bullshit Binary Political Paradigm that says you have to pick either all from Column A or all from Column B. Both columns are full of shit.

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Can I segue to automobile pictures? Why not?

 

 

This is a 1938 Packard Twelve Convertible offered at the recent Mecum auction in Indianapolis. While my obsession with defunct American makes has lessened into more of an interest, I still really like to see cars from those makes. This car went unsold at a high bid of $150,000.

 

 

This is a 1969 Corvette L88 convertible. That was the last of the three years of L88 production; 116 were built in 1969 and 216 were built in total. In an admittedly brief search I was unable to find production figures by body style. This car went unsold at a high bid of $700,000.

At a Barrett-Jackson auction in 2014, a 1967 L88 coupe sold all in for $3,850,000. Only 20 L88s were built that year.

 

 

While I prefer the 1963-65 Buick Riviera, in particular the ’65 GS, I wouldn’t kick this 1966 GS out of my garage for leaking oil. Only 179 Super Wildcat dual quad Rivieras were built in 1966; this example sold all in for $88,000. The $155,000 “ask” on the screen is for the previous car.

 

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#somanyCARSjustonelife

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A VERY Bad Dream

Simply put, I dreamt I was dying. Not in weeks or months, but hours. Doctors informed me that blood was leaking out of my circulatory system, that lymph was leaking out of my lymphatic system and that nothing could be done. My organ systems would quickly fail.

My wonderful wife was not with me so I was alone to process the news. I sat in a room that reminded me very much of the General Manager’s box at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, where I often watched the games. I was sitting with my head on the built-in shelf/table at the front of the box. After awhile I said to myself, “The doctors are crazy. I feel fine.” I raised my head and to my horror noticed two large bumps, one on each arm, that looked like blisters. My facade of denial was totally pierced and I was petrified.

At that point I woke up and the first thing I did was to check each arm. From what kind of mind does such a dream emanate?

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I wish the data in the chart below were a bad dream.

 

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On this day in 1902 the American Automobile Association (AAA) was formed. The American Motor League (AML) had been the first organization to address the problems that commonly plagued motorists, but it fell apart due to a diverse membership that featured powerful automobile manufacturers who wanted to limit the AML only to issues that affected car manufacturing and engineering. However, trade groups such as the Association of Automotive Engineers took its place, paving the way for more specialized automotive organizations.

I have been a AAA member for 30 years. On Friday, September the 13th 1991 the all-in-one accessory belt snapped in my Chevrolet Blazer. Although I managed to call a garage to tow the car from downtown Baltimore, I vowed I would never be as helpless again and joined AAA soon after. (Of course, a bottle of grape juice exploded on the passenger seat during the tow. I owned the Blazer until May of 1995, but the stain was never fully removed despite at least a dozen attempts to clean it.)

My wonderful wife has been a member on my plan as long as we have been married. AAA did bail us out of one really bad spot. In May of 2000, as we were driving from California to Texas since we were moving there, one of the tires on my Pontiac Grand Prix basically blew up on Interstate 10 in Arizona. Of course, I had purchased new tires right before we left California just so that something like that wouldn’t happen. The best laid plans of mice and men…actually, the tire that blew had apparently taken a big nail aboard as a passenger. That’s the major reason I tolerate the relatively rough ride of run-flat tires like those on my Corvette.

The AAA tow truck arrived quickly. The driver knew the location of a nearby tire store and towed us there. In about an hour we were back on the road.

I wouldn’t say that AAA membership has no value, but that value seems to diminish annually. I think our auto insurance company supplies roadside assistance. The free maps and guidebooks are nice, but we don’t travel that much.

Every year when we receive the notice to renew membership my wonderful wife and I debate whether we should let our membership lapse. Every year, at least so far, we decide to renew.

 

American Automobile Association logo.svg

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On this day in 1966 Studebaker announced it would cease all automobile production; 13 days later, the last Studebaker car was built in its Hamilton, Ontario plant. Here is a picture of that car, a 1966 Cruiser:

 

See the source image

 

About Studebaker…as much as I LOVE the looks of the Gran Turismo Hawk, something I recently saw on an episode of Garage Squad may have permanently turned me off to the idea of buying a car without modern safety systems.

The crew was rebuilding a 1969 Plymouth Road Runner. Joe Zolper was shown working on the steering column. The column itself had kind of a honeycomb construction so it would collapse and absorb some of the force if the driver were pushed against it in an accident. The two piece steering shaft was also supposed to collapse with a hard impact.

Zolper mentioned that this was a good safety system before the advent of airbags. Remembering how my wonderful wife was rear-ended at high speed on Highway 101 by a woman WHOSE BABY WAS IN THE PASSENGER SEAT really makes me think any car I acquire in the future has to have devices like airbags. As I used to write often, I have dreams (not all of them are bad), but I live in the real world.

Quality issues aside, I think that puts the Cadillac XLR back on the table as a potential purchase and maybe in the lead since it is of more recent vintage than the Allante and, therefore, has better safety systems. Remember: I drive my cars. They don’t just sit in a garage to be wiped down with a microfiber cloth every week.

 

 

By the way, is it just me or does the XLR have a chopped top look with the top up? I think the vast majority of people who make “good” decisions are flexible and adaptable.

 

Have a good weekend.

 

#AVERYBadDream

#GunsKill

#AmericanAutomobileAssociation

#TheEndOfStudebaker

#IHaveDreamsButILiveInTheRealWorld

#somanycarsjustonelife

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